


Growing up (or not)

by Magik3



Series: Kitty told me to name this series [10]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 08:11:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11482263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magik3/pseuds/Magik3
Summary: A series of chapters in which Illyana and Kitty think about the future of their relationship, including the marriage they can't have because it's a long way from being legal. In this first one, Illyana is upset and gets Logan to take her camping, which does not turn out the way she expects -- at all.





	Growing up (or not)

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter by Magik3, but if we're lucky, KittyViolet's going to chime in with Kitty's point of view. (If we're less lucky, she's going to be stuck working because she won't just use magic like I keep suggesting.)

  
I went to the garage where Wolverine was working on his bike. Perching on the trunk of the nearest car, I told him, “I want to go camping. Far away.”  
  
“Knock yourself out,” he replied.  
  
“They won’t let me go alone. Take me.”  
  
He lifted his head, raised an eyebrow at me and said, “You can’t keep up, Slowflake.”  
  
“You’re afraid to try, in case you can’t keep up, _Suchka_.”  
  
“You know I’m going to ask Petey what that means.”  
  
“Counting on it,” I said, hopped off the trunk and walked out.  
  
Which is both how I got away with calling Wolverine a little bitch, and got my camping trip. We were gone that night. He found me on the back steps eating soup out of the can because I wasn’t going to risk running into Kitty.  
  
“We’re going,” he said.  
  
I put the can down by the side of the steps and followed him. His tone said that we were going now: no packing, no delay, no bringing anything. This suited my mood; it’s what I counted on him for.  
  
In the garage he handed me a helmet and I got on the back of his bike. We went north for a few hours, along highways and smaller roads and onto a dirt track. We left the bike there and jogged into the trees.  
  
He ran and didn’t look back. He was still faster, but I didn’t care. I had put magic on him while we were on the bike so I could track him. I got to the campsite a while after he did, an hour or more. The camp wasn’t much of anything. No fire. He’d found a spot on high ground amid some felled trees. He’d curled up alongside one long, rotting trunk and pulled his hat down over his eyes.  
  
I moved some leaves aside, pressed into the curve between another tree and the earth, pulled the leaves over me and sighed into the familiarity of the ground under me. It wasn’t quite warm enough, but that was good. I could think about being cold and not about anything else.  
  
“Thank you,” I breathed.  
  
He snorted.  
  
In the morning there was a fire over which he roasted something small he’d killed. I went into the woods to pee and find the water that had to be nearby. He wouldn’t have picked a site without water. I found a stream with a widening curve that almost made a pond. The water wasn’t safe to drink, but I had magic for that. Wolverine could probably drink anything.  
  
I watched the flow of the stream for a while, thinking about how cold my toes were and Russia and places that felt like home. But that got too sad because in the end my only familiar places were Limbo and Kitty. Everything else felt like a dream, especially Russia and still, too often, the school. And sometimes, as now, even Kitty was a dream.  
  
I saw mid-sized fish moving through a shallow patch, took off my shirt and strung it across like a net. It wasn’t great, but I caught two. I carried them back to the fire, got out my pen knife and started cleaning them. Wolverine grunted an approving sound and went to the bike. He came back with a small iron skillet. Vanished off into the woods and returned with some wild onions.  
  
The next few days passed like that. No words. Sometimes a grunt from him or a laugh from either of us. I had fishing line in my pocket and a few hooks—I kept a small survival kit on me in case a teleport went horribly wrong. I made a pole and caught more fish when we found deeper water. He scrounged up edible plants because he knew the area and killed us some meat when we got sick of the fish.  
  
After the first day and a half, I felt my heart get quieter. The hurt and anger and fear were still there, but I could hear myself again. Not sure that I was ready for the answer, but at least it was there. Same as always. As if I had to ask. Kitty was always the answer, even if I couldn’t quite go back to her yet.  
  
On the fifth day, Wolvie said, “Wash up, we’re going into town.”  
  
“What for?”  
  
“You talkin’ back now? Wash up or I’m taking you in like that.”  
  
I went to the stream and washed myself and my clothes. It was early afternoon so I could set them out on branches in the sun to dry and put them on damp but not dripping.  
  
My sense of direction wasn’t nearly as good as Wolverine’s, so it didn’t surprise me that our latest camp site turned out to be a short walk from the bike. We drove for about an hour and stopped for burgers that weren’t as good as what we had been eating, but the fries were amazing.  
  
Another hour into a big city. I was debating asking Wolvie “what the hell?” when he pulled the bike into a huge, dark parking lot.  
  
“You keep your yap shut until we have beers, got it?” he said.  
  
I nodded.  
  
He took off his jacket, took off his shirt, put the jacket back on with his bare chest well exposed. What the hell? But I didn’t ask.  
  
We were outside a nightclub, from the music, but the front was darker than any nightclub I’d seen. No sign, only a huge bouncer standing by a door, arms crossed over his chest. He took one look at Wolvie and grinned wide, nodding. But then saw me and said, “No way.”  
  
“No trouble,” Wolvie told him. “Trust me. Cops come, we vanish.” He held out a folded bill and the guy took it, shrugged us inside.  
  
Dark and smoky and so much perfume and cologne I didn’t know how Wolverine wasn’t choking. He pointed to a booth and went to the bar, came back with two beers, slid one over to me.  
  
“You’re going get me drunk and have a talk?” I asked.  
  
“Shut up,” he said and waved a hand around at the bar.  
  
I looked and then I _looked_. Men dancing with other men. A few women with each other. Imposingly tall, beautiful woman teasing each other and the men.  
  
A guy came over and asked Wolvie, “Do you dance?”  
  
“Nope, sorry and I ain’t your type, trust me. Try that guy, blond, end of the bar. He’s looking at you.”  
  
“Oh, hey, thanks.”  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“You’re not … freaking out?” I asked Wolverine after the man had walked away.  
  
“Kid, you and I have seen some fucked up shit. This ain’t any of it. Just people trying to find some love or some fun.”  
  
“Did you ever …?” I drowned the end of the question with a sip of beer, unsure I should have asked it.  
  
But Wolverine shrugged and said, “Tried it. Not my thing. You want to talk or you okay now?”  
  
I drank some of the beer, stared at the people dancing, thought about Kitty. I shook my head. I still didn’t know where to start, much less how to talk about it. Or if I could talk about it with Wolverine. What did he know?  
  
He said, “Kitty’s making the Professor telepathically check on you every day via my brain. We’re going to have to go home eventually.”  
  
“She is?”  
  
“Once a day if I’m lucky, or twice. Fucking telepathy. You two fight?”  
  
I took a gulp of beer to cover my surprise and coughed. He’d said it like it was the most plain thing in the world to ask about me and Kitty, about us fighting, not like little girls, but as people who cared about each other. Plus this bar, bringing me here. His way of saying he knew all of it.  
  
Could he help? Maybe, if anyone could. He was the one I trusted, the one I’d looked for when I was upset. The only one who would spend five days in silence with me in the middle of nowhere without asking why.  
  
I said, “Not a fight. We don’t usually. I mean, sometimes she fights. I just … wait.”  
  
He roared with laughter, head back. “Ain’t that the truth, kid. You waiting now?”  
  
I nodded.  
  
“You’re angry.”  
  
Shook my head again, but ended with a nod. The words weren’t there yet. I drank more beer. It was light and flavorless, but cold. Wolverine sat half sideways, watching people move in the room, waiting for me.  
  
Two of the tall, beautiful women came up to our table. “You look like you need some cheering up,” the shorter one said.  
  
Wolvie waved me toward them. “Bring her back in one piece. No hard liquor.”  
  
I learned a lot: about dancing and drag queens and gay culture and leather. I liked all of it.  
  
I got back to the table, hot and sweaty from dancing. Wolvie was on his second or third  beer but didn’t seem like it mattered. He was the same as when I’d gotten up. And he was still waiting for me to tell him.  
  
I said, “I was looking for a paper she wrote two years ago. In the boxes in our closet.”  
  
He nodded, still turned half sideways and watching the bar, making it easier for me to talk.  
  
“I found an album of her plans for a wedding. To Piotr. All these details. Pages and pages of details: dresses, table settings, food, the wedding canopy—I forget the name, flower arrangements, rings—so many rings. Photos of her and Piotr together. And they look so good. He is so handsome and she’s just … she’s so …” I was whispering now, but he could hear me. I said, “Their names in her handwriting. Her name as Katherine Anne Rasputin. … Kitty Rasputin.”  
  
The words caught hard in my throat, behind my eyes, all pressure and pain. I swallowed more beer, warm now, and rubbed a sleeve across my face.  
  
I said, “He can protect her, take care of her. Maybe he’s best for her. Maybe I should not be here. I will never be acceptable. Here I am a mutant. Among mutants, I am gay. If you had a group of gay mutants, still I would be a demon. Among demons … well, they like me but that is no place for Katya.”  
  
When I wound down, he asked, “Sounds like you’re saying, she’s not mad at you and you’re not mad at her. You’re just mad at everyone?”  
  
“Da.”  
  
“Kid, aren’t you always mad at everyone?”  
  
I laughed. “Also, yes.”  
  
“You’re, what, seventeen, give or take? You two seem to like being together. I haven’t seen Kitty give Peter a second glance in years. How old was this album you found?”  
  
“From when they were dating.”  
  
“A lot changes from fourteen to seventeen,” he said. “A lot more’s going to change. You’ve got a hard life. Why are you making it harder? You two’ve got something. Enjoy it.”  
  
It made sense when he said it. A lot more sense than everything in my head.  
  
“How did you know?” I asked.  
  
He tapped the side of his nose. “Pheromones and such. I keep an eye on Kitty. She smells like she’s up to something, I figure out what that something is and if it’s going to hurt her. Glad it turned out to be you.”  
  
“The demon queen of Limbo? You think I’m … good for Kitty?”  
  
He drank the last of his beer and set the glass down with a resounding thunk. “Someday, not long, you’ll be more powerful than Peter and you pay attention better. Fight goes sideways, you can get her out faster. Plus, you’d tear yourself in half before you’d hurt that girl.”  
  
Like I was doing now, without even asking her if she thought I wasn’t good for her, if she wanted something else. Without asking if she still wanted the dress and the canopy and the ring.  
  
“How do I ask her about this?”  
  
He raised his eyebrows at me. “You leave the album out when you bolted down to the garage to hassle me?”  
  
I nodded.  
  
“Then she knows. And she’s waiting to talk to you. My money’s on she’s waiting to yell at you for being a fool and running out about a kid’s wedding fantasy. It’s not like you’ve got to work to get her to speak her mind.”  
  
I laughed, nodded, managed a better smile than the last few days. I missed her. I could enjoy being yelled at for a while, especially if she did it while pacing and then stopping, hands on hips, and then pacing more. And fluttering hand gestures, if she was mad enough. I’d like that.  
  
“I like when she yells at me,” I admitted and Wolverine started chuckling again, shaking his head. I added, “She yells in waves, like she can’t remember everything she’s mad at me about all at the same time. It makes me feel … important to her.”  
  
“Yep, you fit right in with the lot of us, kid. You ready to go home?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You drink too much to teleport?” he asked.  
  
“Hardly.” I plinked my fingernail against the side of the empty glass. Maybe if it had been vodka.  
  
“Good. I’m out of cigars. Let’s go.”


End file.
